I used to vote Conservative but, I simply do not trust David Cammeron on either Europe or Immigration.

He has made it plan that he will campaign to stay in Europe, what ever the result of his aspiration of 'negotiating with Europe'.

I am seriously worried about Cammeron. I feel that he is young and nieve. Let's face it, there are a lot of people in England who are older and more experience than him. We have lived through the Experience of Europe. We can tell him what its been like, not vide versa.

I have absolutely no confidence in Cameron sticking up for the English people. he will sell us down the river, just like Blair. For example, who's idea was it to 'give' Scotland away? Were the English consulted? It does affect england after all!

So, a high ranking UKIP officials (Bristol chairman, to be precise) can get away with statements like this:
Q: UKIP’s sole aim is to have a referendum on the European Union, but what would you do after that?
A: It’s the only way for Britain. That means that every Eastern European would have to leave, except for the ones who have had kids. For example, say a Polish couple come over here and have kids – it’s a British kid. They would probably have to stay.
Q: What if they’ve worked here for four or five years?
A: No. People have got this opinion that these people come here to take the poor jobs. Rubbish. Some of them are taking IT jobs that British people could have, some of them are nurses. I’ve had firsthand experience where my mother was in hospital, I went to complain about something to the four or five nurses there and not one of them could speak English.http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/i-spoke-to-my-local-ukip-representative-t...
So, to recap, EVERY SINGLE Eastern European would have to leave, in Collins's view. Regardless of the reason they came to the UK (eminent doctors, anyone? professors? large investors?), or of the contribution they made to its economy in the form of taxes or pension payments. None of this would matter, because, in UKIP's view, these considerations would be made irrelevant simply because of "wrong" geographical origin of those bloody Eastern Europeans. Is it only me, or does this smack of Nazi-style policies?
What makes me very concerned is not creeping move of UKIP to the extreme right, but the sheer popularity of this party in the UK. Not only people with such views are not condemned, they continue to occupy high profile roles, and the party to which they belong is viewed as an example of being in tune with voters' expectations.

What makes it all the more woorying is that, as it stands, Ed Miliband will be Prime Minister in a couple of years.

I mean, how utterly insane is that! If things are bad now then our current predicament is going to look like a day out at Kubla Khan's pleasuredome when the most unstatesmanlike buffoon ever to enter Westminster starts fannying around.

Millband is unelectable, no one trusts Labour over the lies they told, especially over immigration. Out in the real world people are losing their jobs and having their wages cut. People did not want this immigration and they now have the courage to protest.

Please, my British friends, please go on and elect more UKIP MPs. Please drive the Conservative party further to the right. Please stop immigration into Britain, and please get the hell out of the European Union.

In the process, you will most certainly destroy the United Kingdom. In three years, you will have had a quadruple recession, completely imitating the Japanese experience (except that you were never as productive as the Japanese when you started your long decline, making your own lost decades even more painful). In the two years following that, you will have faced complete isolation in the European continent and, as a consequence, loss of your 'special relationship' with the United States. And in ten years, you will have lost Scotland, whose electorate is already getting tired of being dominated by the choices of a larger and stupider English electorate.

The process will be painful and perhaps even close to lethal for the United Kingdom, but it will serve as a warning to other nations that right-wing radicalism is no more productive than left-wing radicalism, and that voting is about making responsible choices as an adult. I am hoping that Britain, by sacrificing itself to the whims of its most irresponsible, most uneducated voters, will serve as a good example of how not to run a country to the rest of the world.

Incidentally, point of information: referring to anybody who disagrees with you simply as "bigoted" is intolerant, abusive verbal bullying, and (perhaps more to the point for a left wing person) no longer impresses or intimidates anybody. Rather, it only confirms that you don't actually have any reasoned or evidence-based arguments to make on the issue(s) at hand.

I lent the Conservatives mine and my household votes at the last election. But that was based on nothing in the manifesto about 'gay marriage'. All of a sudden the Party has made a volte-face and is now the Party of the minorities!

Unless this Party return to the sane position that it held before, its demise is imminent. I,too, I'm returning to my political home. There'll be no second chance for David Cameron.

It's not the writer's fault, but I don't really think this blog says anything that hasn't been said many times before.

UKIPers tend to assume they're the silent majority, without it ever occurring to them that they might actually just be the most vocal. The silent majority are probably those in the centre that Cameron's (sanely) going for and who are more interested in whether there will be jobs for their children.

What I'm interested in is what's happened to those voters who agreed with those Tory policies under IDS, Howard et al, but were turned off when they found out they were Tory policies. For how much longer will Cameron be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't?

Parliament no longer tries to represent us. The rise in population, 4 million, is due entirely to immigration. WE are now over-crowded. We could no longer fight wW II - think what teh food rations would be with hardly any navy left! Cameron could have wond teh last election with a landslide if he had offered us survival as a nation: Get Out of the E.U. today, and turn the tide of immigration, or even stop immigration.
The first duty of parliament used to be "Defence of the realm" but since 1974 parliament has given the realm away to Brussels and migrants.
We are not racists!
Is our only hope now either the BNP or civil war?
Mona McNee

Why civil war? I really don't think there is anything like that level of social tension in the UK. But then, I live in London and have spent most of my life living in and around London and people seem to rub along as well as they ever did to me; the press has certainly got an awful lot more vitriolic about immigration and you have a lot of UKIP and BNP folk talking about the "mainstream" not wanting to talk about immigration, but it's about all the press ever really talks about.

If it's an easing of social tension you're after, I really don't know how on Earth you think Nick Griffin and co. will do that; the man is full of hate and bile.

The idea that the Conservative Party lost in 2001 and 2005 because it was too right wing has been put forward many times but doesn't stand up to the evidence. It doesn't explain why Margaret Thatcher won three elections in a row. It doesn't explain why John Major, with Kenneth Clarke as his right-hand man, lost in 1997. And it isn't supported by examination of the relevant manifestos, which were in fact less right wing than David Cameron's in 2010 (anyone who doesn't believe this is welcome to go check).

The reason the Conservative Party lost in 2001 and 2005 is exactly the opposite: they offered no coherent or thought-out alternative philosophy to Labour's. Instead, Hague and Howard cynically pushed the policies which polls showed they had the biggest lead in. The voters saw through this and stuck with the devil they knew.

Nor is this hindsight or rationalisation. I personally had a letter published in the Daily Telegraph in the autumn of 2009, later referred to in PMQ's in Parliament, complaining precisely about Howard's relentless poll-chasing and predicting the obvious result.

I hesitate to use the word "reactionary" as it has a political meaning I don't wish to imply here, but that does seem to be what David Cameron thinks it takes to run a country. It's no wonder his party failed miserably in Eastleigh, he is so busy trying to undermine the LibDems on one hand, and copy UKIP on the other that he's forgotten to look after normal voters. On top of that he never sacks people for incompetence eg Teresa May, George Osborne and looks after his rich backers more than ordinary folk so is it any wonder that the ordinary folk of Eastleigh rejected his public school view of the world and kept their down to earth, sensible and hard working LibDem candidate?

While the Tory party continues this misguided scapegoating of anything European, Britain will be doomed to mediocrity.

Crux of the matter seems to be whether the mainstream political parties should base their policies on populist sentiment or on what - following rigorous analysis and resisting the temptation to let emotion triumph over reason - they conclude is the optimal position for the nation taken in the round. Must admit I'm starting to feel some sympathy for the politicians! If they take positions that differ from the views of those such as d.andre (whose analytical framework includes consideration of whether it is right that he/she has to share lifts with immigrants)then the policitcians are branded as elitist and out of touch. However, if they see their role as simply reflecting and enacting populist views with which they profoundly disagree, they are abdicating their responsibility to provide leadership to the nation. In short, mob rule or enlightened leadership based on rational analysis? Dark Ages or Renaissance? A significant fork in the road...

Spot on. I think we are forgetting a little experiment that the Tories performed in 2010. That was the holding of all party primaries which among others produced the excellent Dr Wollaston. They should do it again on a wider scale and institute a recall mechanism on the same basis. It would produce candidates with a wide appeal over genders, incomes, and ethnicity.

The reason UKIP is elected is because they represent what many people think - know. The country is swamped by foreigners. All these wonderful Poles etc. all have to be housed and the country is FULL. The schools, the hospitals the roads. All these middle class readers that live in their comfortable semis and detached houses do not have to share lifts and stairs and homes with the likes of immigrants. It is those people that think that the country is over-run. And the mantra that the Poles work so much harder than the English is wearing thin. We are not doing our young people - young men any favours. I think they are the most hard done-by group of people. They have no voice and the backlash is coming.
If these people had to find their own accommodation and pay their own rent they will soon stop coming. Instead they are given everything.
Yes I am angry on behalf of angry young men. They have no representation. I could go on.

I live in a predominently working class area of the formerly industrial north east. We have Poles and they are not an issue. They have come and done jobs local people wouldn't do. We don't really have a housing problem so perhaps that helps.

UKIP are a vehicle for people's general discontent. Their policies are woolly and populist. In a general election situation they will revert to what they were before - a nuisance. As far as I'm concerned they will prevent a Tory majority in the 2015 general election. I can live with that quite happily, as I can with the local Polish community.

There are only about half a million Poles living in the UK. If you want to blame somebody, why don't you point your finger at your own government? You know, less than one percent of the population cannot be responsible for 8 percent unemployment, country-wide housing shortages, lack of school places, road conjestion and NHS cuts.

Not true. Prince Phillip is an immigrant who renoucewd his own natiolalithy. The Queen is the descendedn o f an immigarnt.
Jessica Ennis is the daughter of an mmigrant. Mo Farah is an immigrant.
On overcrowding Japan has half our liveable area and twice the population. No problem.
Immigrants are essential to our development.
And if the country is overcrowded let us ship pensioners and welfare recipients to Eastern Europe or Africa where they will be rich. I know I did it. Spain is full of such people

I am not blaming the Poles. I was merely commenting on someone's blog that they are hard working etc. And yes the country is too crowded. Have you been to France recently? You can drive down a motorway and meet only a few other cars, try drivig down the M1 all 3 lanes are full it seems at any time of day.
You have to understand that in this country they is a large middle class that thinks it is sophisticated to run down the English (working class)as lazy.
The reasons many foreign workers find jobs are mainly due to pay. Employers in their desire to maximise their profits pay peanuts. It seems that everyone wants a slave - factory owners, farmers, hospitals, carehomes. If these people paid a day's wages for a day's work then they would not find any problems with workers. Of course the other side to it is that benefits are sufficient to get by and the previous governement has a lot to answer for.
We are all guilty - we want cheap food, clothes, services and in the end we will pay dear for it. Indeed we are already, the 1 Trillion pound debt needs to be paid.
As for not having a housing problem, (49?) where has that come from? Houses are unaffordable and young people cannot hope to begin to look for a house until they get a sizable deposit and they cannot because they pay a sizable rent! And housing demand causes housing shortage and exorbitant prices.
Back to UKIP. They are succeding because there is a group in the population that feel totally disenfrachised and often are the young.

You patently misunderstood what I said. I am not denying that UK has a multitude of problems- my point is that a tiny minority of the population cannot be held responsible for the failings of your governments (and, more fundamentally, for the failings of the population that elects them).
Good luck with UKIP. I wonder what stories it will tell you once the UK pulls out of Europe, and its economy tanks as a result.

Besides betraying the author's political prejudices, what is the point of the article ? To confess that those who hold a different view are delusional ? Such arrogance. Typical of the Liberal Metropolitan elite

This country is moving more rightwards on a host of issues which UKiP is well situated to benefit from. If the Conservatives truly were too right-wing this election as TE argues, then what does it say that combined the Tories and UKiP easily won more votes combined than any other party or the two main left-wing parties combined? The problem was the right-wing message was split. Right-wing policies are popular even if they are smothered by the media establishment, including TE. An alliance between UKiP and the Tories next election will lead to the alliance winning and finally a right-wing agenda which this country sorely needs.

Dream on. The last thing the conservative party leadership is going to do is let a UKIP trojan horse into the house of commons. The only way UKIP wins seats is if the conservative party pulls it's candidates. Isn't going to happen.

Right wing policies "smothered by media establishment"? Well, the most popular press (DM, DT, The Sun) incessantly peddles the stories that all of Britain's problems are mainly due to the immigration, and the pulling out of Europe will have a miraculous impact on Britain's standards of living. Cameron was not too shy last week to give an extended interview to the extremely right wing Daily Express, which is well know for its very inflammatory rhetoric on the above issues.
So, the media hardly stifles anything. Rather, it provokes a populist response from the government to the barrage of news stoking fears and prejudices.

This is in the Conservatives interests though. Conservatives will win more seats by standing in areas where the right-win vote will not be split. Without a deal, there will be many seats which will go Labour or Lib Dem because of split-party voting.

We do have some newspapers this is true which are right-wing. However, as we all know newspapers have been declining for a long time. All the radio, the television, and more importantly the BBC, are left-wing dominated. And 'media' does not just include news. Virtually all entertainment programmes are very left-wing, and today of all days the one year anniversary of Breitbart's death is appropriate to point out that politics is downstream from popular culture.

If the right-wing vote was split then surely the LibDems would have been totally hammered under an AV voting system? What a pity, then, that Cameron endorsed the mendacious "No" campaign which killed off AV! Instead of an MP elected as a result of preferences from a clear majority of the population, we have a non-entity MP who has been elected with 32% of the vote.
Well done Cameron - pillock!
By blocking AV and pushing through gay marriage, Cameron has shown himself to be fundamentally undemocratic - and it is that, as much as anything in the policy sphere, which has led to the rise of UKIP! We've known for years that Labour weren't to be trusted - and now we know that the Tories can't even be trusted to be conservative!

I think the author has forgotten a rather important point: a large number of people are disillusioned with the three main parties, whose leaderships have now transformed them into essentially social democratic parties. The rise of UKIP is therefore probably more to do with this general disillusionment, as evidenced by the fact UKIP took a large number of votes from the 3 main parties in this election.

In this by-election, the turnout was about 53%, from memory.
In a general election, it's typically 70%+.
The very large difference between these two participation rates means that you can say NOTHING AT ALL about whether those who voted UKIP this time might previously have voted Tory/LDP/Labour, unless you have further good evidence, such as detailed exit polls.
.
But that's not to say that plenty of people aren't fed up with the main parties.

The problem for the conservatives is that while UKIP is a motley collection of protests and prejudices, it's a motley collection that draws most of it's support from people who vote for the conservative party...a party about 40% of whose elected members agree with the central plank in UKIP's platform, namely withdrawal from Europe. Cameron's belief that he can straddle the fence on this issue is a fantasy in at least two major respects. Anything short of withdawal is not going to satisfy UKIP/Conservative eurosceptics and the deeply Eurocentric leaders of the EU are not going to let Cameron cherry pick membership conditions that will undermine the institution to solve his domestic political problems. The similarities with the predicaments of Peel over the corn laws and Balfour over protection are striking. Cameron really needs to embark on a serious re-education program on European realities for his own supporters. He won't of course and will thus flounder into the next election and very likely lose it which is when the real civil war in the conservative party will break out.